Month: November 2018

Hands across the Divide: a Softer Approach to Politics

Liberals, listen up! Not all that’s Right is Wrong

In the last two days my left wing partisanship has been mollified by news that undercut my picture of the political right wing as a monolithic  tribe.

Of course I’ve been aware that my bias (and possibly yours?)  has been simplistic and irrational, but when I hear leaders on the hard Right speak, all my objectivity flies out the window.

Time for a correction through hearing from regular  people.

“Hands across the Hills” attempt to bridge a painful divide

On November 29, on NPR’s Here and Now,* came a report on “Hands across the Hills,” a gathering of Trump-voting West Virginians and Massachusetts liberals  face-to-face.

A link to the  Here and Now story follows. I recommend, if you have the time, to listen to the podcast, which has the greater emotional force.  The transcript is quicker, but loses some of the human touch.

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Beethoven again: thunder and more

An antidote to the frenzies of our time –

Now that the thunder of the 2018 election has subsided into rumbles, let’s give the timeless thunder of great piano music a listen, in particular Ludwig van Beethoven’s third movement of the “Appassionata” sonata.

Those familiar with this sonata may argue that the first movement is the more distinctive, and is also more structurally coherent—despite its swings between ominous shadows and brilliant arcs, still a stable edifice.  The third is—well, the “structure” is a vehicle racing along a precipice in an earthquake, jolted and swayed and flown and flung and repeatedly braked and accelerated under a sky of swirling rainbows sucked from an alien planet.

The sonata itself to come in a minute, but first an aside on Beethoven’s most devoted fan, the “Peanuts” character Schroeder, and Schroeder’s creator, Charles Schulz.  Unbeknownst to me until I read the piece on Schulz and Schroeder by April Dembrosky in the New York Times, Schulz also had “a weakness for country western.”* I was also unaware that Beethoven’s food of choice was macaroni and cheese.** ( Read about it here.

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Low Crimes and Misdemeanors: Crushing Democracy One Shovelful at a Time

Scales of justice teetering all one way

Thunk, thunk, thunk, is the sound of Donald Trump throwing shovelfuls of partisan excrement on one side of the sagging scales of justice within a crumbling system of governance.  In one week he has named a blatantly partisan operative of the political right wing to the position of Acting Attorney General—without even bothering to give lip service to the obligation to get Senate confirmation—and gone on to deny the legitimacy of elections in places where the sole source of grievance is that the President’s allies may lose to Democrats.

Talk of impeachment is now much in the air, with pundits parsing the meaning of the “high crimes and misdemeanors” to be invoked in the case of impeaching a U.S. President.  Here’s the wording of the impeachment clause in the U.S. Constitution: “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

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